Every home game has them.
Matter of fact, it would not be a home game without them. The crazy, exuberant fans who scream the loudest and bare their chests for the sheer love of the game.
Dyed Coyote red, they are a defiant sight of pride, and as central to the atmosphere as Charlie Coyote and Dome Dogs. Often they come in packs, caped crusaders storming the plain brown benches, C-O-Y-O-T-E-S emblazoned across seven chests for football games, basketball games, any games. Just as long as the Coyotes are there to cheer for,
they will come.
Contrast these two fans. Both swiped their Coyote cards and walked into the game, paying nothing out of pocket. One is of the sort I have just described. The other takes the game in stride, clapping when the Coyotes score, sitting quietly with maybe a frown, maybe a small boo, when the opponents make their shots.
Obviously, there needs to be a backdrop for the wild fans to make their mark. An entire crowd writing COYOTES would blur together into alphabet soup, distilling the mark of pride into the school spirit equivalent of light beer. But that is no reason why, when the clock winds down and every basket, every instant counts, every single fan cannot be on their feet, jumping wildly and screaming like they just won free tuition for a year.
Those of you who have been to games know that the students and the visitor sections are adjourned. Under no circumstances must the visitors be allowed to act louder than the home team. But at the games I have attended, its happened. And it’s a travesty.
Those wild fans and their berserk ways must not be allowed to seize all the glory of Coyote pride. These games are not a classroom where one smart student can be allowed to act up the role of ‘teacher’s pet’ and spare the others the need to talk. This is our university, our team, and we better act like it.
USD and South Dakota State can talk all they want about how competing against each other will bring life back to South Dakotan athletics. But until each and every fan at the games becomes as frantic and as energized as the most insane one, the red and the blue will not mean anything to the average student.
And that is a loss to this university. And it is a loss to all of us.
But we should not stand idly by and wait for those rivalries to happen.
Let the university see the fans going wild for all teams, any team, whomever is playing and they will start to wonder just how excited Coyote fans can get.
Perhaps, it might even inspire them to find out.
As students, we come here, we pay our tuition and fees, we party ourselves into drunken oblivion during D-Days, and we call it good for these years between high school and that netherland called the real world.
There is no greater thrill of belonging than being of one many voices decked in red and screaming for the Yotes to pull off a victory. USD students come from many different backgrounds, of many different ages, and many different interests. But no matter who we are, we call ourselves Coyotes.
And even the most ignorant among us as to what a free throw or a layup really entails knows what it means when the Coyotes are ahead, and has the enthusiasm to rally them there.
Reach reporter Sarah Paulus at Sarah.Paulus@usd.edu.
